Nationalism in India: A Study of Influence of Tilak’s Nation Centric and Tagore’s Universalist Idealism on Contemporary Nationalism

Abstract

The Age of Enlightenment, industrialisation with capitalist production, and colonialism are interconnected historical phenomena. The growth of science as a mechanical stream and intellectual mode of reasoning postulated twofold reformations. While it transformed society from an agrarian economy with a feudal state into an industrial economy with a centralised bureaucratic state, its firm emphasis on positive knowledge as the only authentic source of knowledge diminished the conventional social prominence of traditional religions and challenged social morality. Rapid industrialisation in Europe augmented the pace of urbanisation, and new towns came into existence where workers from diverse countryside regions started to migrate in search of employment. These pluricultural and multilingual towns began to face difficulties, such as a deficiency of vehicular language between people of diverse linguistic backgrounds and the clash of identities, which consequently began to affect industrial production. At this juncture, the state-sponsored universal vis-à-vis uniform education gradually developed a lingua franca, cultivated a sense of belongingness and class fraternity among workers, and facilitated labour-capital industrial transactions. The linguistic homogeneity accompanied by cultural assimilation and sentiments of fraternity fostered the growth of nationalism: the linguistic, cultural, political, and economic homogenisation and standardisation of a geographical territory as a nation-state. This integration process horizontally separated the community into society and state. This separation widened the scope of functions and powers of the state and provided it with a reverential identity. The state became the epitome of identity and pride, culminating in the emergence and expansion of the nation state epoch.